Fw: Rationale for *text* -> \alert{text} for Beamer export?

Fw: Rationale for *text* -> \alert{text} for Beamer export?

[Marcin Borkowski]

I accidentally responded in private, so for completeness I forward this
to the list.


Początek przekazywanej wiadomości:

Data: Thu, 2 May 2013 00:00:05 +0200
Od: Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl>
Do: John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com>
Temat: Re: [O] Rationale for *text* -> \alert{text} for Beamer export?


Dnia 2013-05-01, o godz. 15:50:13
John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> napisał(a):

> On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 10:00 AM, Marcin Borkowski
> <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl> wrote:
> > Dnia 2013-05-01, o godz. 09:17:23
> > John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> napisał(a):
> >
> >> Greetings,
> >>
> >> Just wondering about the rationale behind using *bold* markup for
> >> \textbf{} in LaTeX export and to \alert{} in Beamer. Was this a
> >> frequently voiced request? I'm sure I can dig into this somewhere
> >> and change it, but if the majority prefers bold (not saying they
> >> do!), should that be the default?
> >>
> >> I'd prefer bold, personally. I don't like red table column titles
> >> or in lists.

One more thing: /if/ we map *...* to \textbf{...}, then /what/ should
we map to \alert{...}?  This seems to me the best answer to your
primary question (about the rationale) - especially given the fact that
boldface should generally be avoided (see below).

> > Just my 2 cents:
> >
> > * In general, you shouldn't use boldface in printed documents
> > (unless you have a good reason.  A /very/ good, thought out
> > reason.  And usually you haven't one;).).
> 
> Do you have sources for this? I googled "why you shouldn't use bold"
> and "why you shouldn't use bold for papers" and some others. I
> couldn't find anyone making that case in the first two pages of hits.
> I guess I expected that if this was common knowledge it wouldn't be
> hard to find.

Sorry for a bit fuzzy references - I have only Polish translations of
the following books, so I can't refer by page number nor give exact
quotes.  If you don't find them, write me - I'll try to translate the
relevant (short) parts to English;).

* Jost Hochuli, "Das Detail in der Typografie" (section on emphasis)

* Robert Bringhurst, "The Elements of Typographic Style" (paragraph
  6.5.3)

* Michael Mitchell, Susan Wightman, "Book Typography.  A Designer's
  Manual" (chapter III, section on boldface)

* This answer: http://stackoverflow.com/a/1936910/1181665 contains the
  crucial distinction: <em> is for making something stand out
  when /reading/, <strong> is for making something stand out
  when /skimming/.

> > * In presentations, things are indeed quite different.
> >
> > * Keeping that in mind, \alert{...} is /better/ than \textbf{...},
> > just like \emph{...} is better than \textit{...}: it is semantic,
> > not visual markup.
> 
> Can you explain semantic vs. visual? As in you can more easily
> customize the meaning of \alert{} or \emph{} whereas \textbf{} and
> \textit{} only has one meaning? Sort of like using a css tag which can
> be later customized vs. specifically calling out exactly what you're
> thinking you want to do at the moment?

\textit{} and \textbf{} are visual in the sense that they say "this
should look like that".  \emph{} and \alert{} are semantic in the sense
that they say "this is important, and it is the designer (not the
author) who should decide how to actually render it.  Usually, \emph{}
is italics and \alert{} (in beamer, there's no \alert in standard
LaTeX) is red (or other color, depending on the theme).  But one might
argue for e.g. another color for \emph{}, or another background (and
not foreground!) for \alert{} etc.  Even in standard LaTeX, \emph{}
is /not always/ italics: for instance, you can try \emph{emphasis
\emph{within} emphasized text}!  Your comparison to css tags seems to
be very good to me.

Another good example of semantic markup is \email{...} (and not
\texttt{...}) for email addresses: usually, you can just say
\newcommand{\email}[1]{\texttt{#1}}, so they are effectively the same,
but then you have many benefits with semantic markup.  One of them
becomes obvious when you realize that you might want to use \texttt for
e.g. both emails and web addresses in a printed document, but when you
later decide to prepare an electronic version, these two groups should
(obviously) behave differently.  If you don't markup them using
different macros (or "tags" in XML/HTML/whateverML parlance), you have
a problem then.

> > * If you do insist on boldface as "alerting", just say
> >     \setbeamerfont{alerted text}{series=\bfseries}
> >   in your preamble.  Keep in mind, however, that this will break
> > things if you use alert<...>{...}.  Take this document, for
> > instance:
> >
> > \documentclass{beamer}
> >
> > \begin{document}
> > \begin{frame}
> >   This is \alert{alerted} text.
> >
> >   And this is \alert<2>{alerted} only on the second slide.
> > \end{frame}
> > \end{document}
> >
> >   In it, text will "wobble" when changing slides.  This is ugly.
> >
> 
> Sure, and understood. In general, I'm using *text* simply to call
> attention to something important. I work in product development, so
> something like:

Obvious - many things depend on use cases, I use \alert<...> from time
to time and boldface is terrible then, in your case it seems a
non-issue.

> Customer response to product sampling:
> - *US:* blah blah blah
> - *China:* blah blah blah
> - *India: blah blah blah
> 
> Using *text* is simply to call attention to the fact that the *word:*
> is an "in-line header" of sorts for what is to follow. Also, it lets
> readers easily compare the bolded text and pick the bucket they care
> to explore vs. having it blend in with the prose that follows.
> Regardless of the opinions on bold vs. red text, I find bold (or
> italics) are more conventional, whereas red conveys "problem" or
> "yikes" and simply seems more counter-conventional, so I feel it
> distracts more than a more typical typeface emphasis method.
> 
> In essence, I simply want to call attention to text, but not too much
> and red stand out like a sore thumb, in my opinion, far more than bold
> or italic. It's so dominant that it over-does it's job of emphasizing.

From your description it seems to me that this is precisely \alert what
you need; you just want it to be bold and not red;).

> > * So, what you probably want, is to say
> >     \setbeamercolor{alerted text}{fg=red!50!black}
> >   in your preamble, so \alert{...} means a color in the midpoint
> > (in RGB linear space) between red and black (you might want to
> > experiment with percentages other than 50% or wholly different
> > colors, of course).
> >
> 
> Thanks for letting me know how to tweak and mute down a bit. I can
> play with that... though I probably just want *text* to equal bold, or
> I'll decide to use /text/ instead.

Then, you can use the \setbeamerfont trick I described earlier.

> John

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Adam Mickiewicz University


-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Adam Mickiewicz University